I was a lawyer before I started writing, and when I made the switch, my husband starting introducing me as a writer. In so many ways, it’s one of the nicest things he’s ever done for me. For starters, it made me feel his confidence in me when I didn’t necessarily have that much confidence in myself for this newly chosen path. And I think it did make me more committed to what I was doing. There is nothing like the question “What have you written?” to make one want to have an answer.
But no one will ask if they don’t know you are writing.
That’s the idea behind Nanowrimo: “The more people who know what you’re up to this November, the less likely you are to slink away from victory in a rare moment of exhaustion or doubt.” (That’s a quote from the site.) The drill is you own up to the fact that you want to write a novel, that you mean to race into it by cranking out 50,000 words in the month of November. 50,000!
Well, I’m here to tell you I’ve never written that many words anything close to that quickly. But I want to applaud the concept of urging writers to call themselves writers in whatever way works for you.
Will writing anything that fast result in decent writing? I’ll have to think about this. I’m just starting a new novel. And I’ll be traveling the whole first week of November. But there are always excuses, aren’t there? And it might be a great way to blast into the new book, so you never know… – Meg
